French voters punish presidential-poll favourites

A MID-TERMLREM election is seldom a moment for voters to applaud their rulers. But the snub that they handed to President Emmanuel Macron’s party in the first round of voting in French regional elections on June 20th was quite something. Nobody expected La République en Marche () to come first in any of the country’s 13 regions. But in three of them, its candidates did not get even the 10% needed to go through to the second round on June 27th. Countrywide, his party got just 11%, putting it in fifth place. The day after the vote, as if to try to discount the damage, Mr Macron inaugurated a refurbished Parisian department store, welcomed Justin Bieber to his office, and hosted an electro concert at the Elysée palace.To be fair, this is a rather odd election. The date was postponed twice because of covid-19. The first round took place just as the French had emerged from a third national lockdown, and on the day that an eight-month-long nightly curfew was finally lifted. Sure enough, the pull of polling stations proved no match for that of bars and beaches. Turnout was shockingly low, at 33%, down from 50% at regional elections in 2015. Only 16% of those aged 18-24 voted, according to Ifop, a pollster.